Who Cares About WordPress.com?

I was recently told “Oh, it’s WordPress.com only. Who cares.”

Well, at last count on the WordPress.com font page, 146,000 blogs and their bloggers care.

People who know better have learned that anything and everything that happens to WordPress.com blogs benefits the whole of the WordPress Community. I’ve watched as the original naysayers, people long involved in WordPress, not only come around to the benefits of WordPress.com, but in a couple cases, are now “staff” of WordPress.

The mythology that “free” means cheap, crippled, near to useless, totally restrictive, and only a marketing tool to get you to spend money later is totally bogus when it comes to WordPress products. Sure, the parent company, Automattic, has to make money in order to survive, but WordPress has always been free and will continue to be free, though donations and gifts are very welcome.

In the spirit of such freedom, WordPress.com offers bloggers a chance to get a taste of the full, free version of WordPress without the hassles of all the do-it-yourself work. If you like how it works, if you enjoy the administrative interface, the ease of making it work, the ease to change the look and style of your blog, and you know enough to be danger when it comes to choosing and developing your own WordPress Theme design, then you have the choice.

You got free to blog and free to tweak. I’d call those some fun free choices.

WordPress.com users become research rats as they get to test drive new features that often become available as Plugins or incorporated into the full version as a result of popularity with WordPress.com users.

Develops WordPressMU, a multi-user blogging system which allows for many bloggers to blog under the same roof, good for groups, memberships, businesses, and corporations.

Allows people to blog for free, introducing them to the fun world of blogs.

I’m sure you can come up with even more benefits WordPress.com provides to the WordPress Community. But know this. The volunteers who run the WordPress Support Forums (both of them), provide the FAQs, WordPress Codex documentation, beta testers, WordPress Plugin authors, WordPress Theme designers, language translation services, WordPress developers, and even this blog, do so because they love the program. The only “payment” they get is to share their passion for WordPress with others. It is hard work, time consuming, and often frustrating as this effort is so little appreciated a lot of the time, especially by those who assume that these volunteers are paid. They are not. At least 99% are not. Yet they give their heart and soul to this effort.

So if you decide to condemn a whole or even part of the whole, show a little appreciation for the work that goes into even the smallest element of WordPress. Love, sweat, tears, and a lot of time with little reward went into this. And everyone benefits, from all of it.

I’m one of those who dumped wordpress on my on own hosted site – and am in the process of bringing it onto wordpress.com (hopefully this weekend if i find time.)

I’m finding it harder to post and also maintain a website – wordpress.com provides me with what i loved (wordpress, blogging) and removes the hassle (updates.) I’m sure i’m not the only one. In life sometimes things that are free can be great… this is one of those things.

Yea, that was me. I wasn’t “condemning” WP although it does sound like that now that I see it in black and white again. I was just griping that what good is it if we can’t use it?, just like the CrazyEgg Matt just posted about that isn’t available to the public yet. Sorry, that kinda thing just gets on my nerves. Yeah I knew about it the day it was broadcast but until it is available for everybody, what good is it other than to brag about access privileges? I heard enough of that from a few other bloggers that I don’t follow anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I live in my WP world most of the day and am very thankful it exists. Heck, if it weren’t available, I’d probably be using MT, Mambo, PHPNuke, WebWord, Plone or Zope or whatever else is new on the block. As is, I’m very happy practicing webmasterish techniques with my humble WP blog and am even ready to start playing with PhotoShop CS2 & Flash Studio 8 that I just got, so yes, thank you WP. Didn’t mean to ruffle any feathers but I know how people are so I won’t be back to this thread you can believe that lol. Peace.

I like WordPress, but I don’t like the lab rat part of being at WP.com. I used to get responses to the “bugs and hugs” I sent in (and yes I sent both), but not anymore. And the forums are unpleasant (usually involves moderator drmike saying “closing this thread, this has been posted elsewhere, try searching first next time!” or “you’d probably do better on your own hosted site”). I like that WP.com is free, but I’d pay for it if that would help with getting real support and better stability. I don’t go solo because I like the community aspect of it and my css skillz are pathetic.

I didn’t name names, and feathers weren’t ruffled in defense of WordPress.com and WordPress developers, as much as my “who cares” and “why bother” feathers came unhinged.

I understand very well, since I live with them every day, that there are limits with WordPress.com. And yes, I’m not totally happy being a lab rat, but I know that what we do here helps everyone in the WordPress Community, and that is important. And we get a chance to play with the latest, hottest, bestest tool in town! Even if there are a few slips and slides along the way.

What is good is that we have a place to blog. We might not have a place to tweak, fiddle, and torque, but we can share our words, our thoughts, our opinions, and even our life lessons. We have a place to speak out and express ourselves.

As for features found on WordPress.com that aren’t available yet to full version WordPress users, I don’t have a problem with that either. Full version users have the ability to totally control their WordPress blogs, including using any and all plugins they want. WordPress.com limits so much of what we “can” do, we’re happy with anything we can get.

As for WordPress.com new features, bells and whistles, if they work on WordPress.com, expect them to become public. If they don’t, then, well, aren’t you the lucky one while we suffered. ;-)

As for the WordPress Support Forums, including WordPress.com, yes, I’ve seen a militant response. I’m not comfortable with it either. The whine about “search first, ask second” carries some weight, but this is no reason to be nasty. The Forums aren’t chat rooms either, so don’t expect to find “buddies” in there and talk about walking your dog in the rain. It’s for help.

The cool thing about the WordPress Support Forums is that if you don’t like them, get involved and help change it. Learn how to use the program and then give a few minutes of your time to answer others questions. Take some of the burden off the moderators and other volunteers. I learned a lot helping in the Forums. If I didn’t know the answer to a question, I went looking for an answer, learned something new, and then figured out how to post the answer, learning more as I went. You just have to care.

Which is what the whole post is about. Start caring, folks. When you care, you want to help. And when you help, everyone benefits. We are all part of the WordPress Community, so think of it as helping the Community.

And BillyG, I have enjoyed your comments and repartee on this blog, so this was in no way a targeted attack. You keep on doing what you are doing. You provoke me and make me think. That helps me do my job much better here. Thank you!

Oh, blagermeister, I almost forgot. With almost 150,000 bloggers on WordPress.com all using the FEEDBACK button, be happy if you get an automated response. Just think of the email they have to contend with. That could kill a server alone! They read them all, but can’t respond to every one. And it’s one job that I’m glad I don’t have to do. UGH!

blagermeister – There’s nothing automated about any responses in the Feedback / Support. It has been busy, the workload has risen and that’s why I am here. I read everything that comes in. If I don’t know the answer, or I cannot solve the issue then I will get someone who can to do it. It will not disappear into some black hole.
And if you have ideas, send them too.